Finally, It Feels Like Star Wars
I've noticed that the people who hate the new changes generally love the **game mechanics** of the original SWG more than they care whether or not that game was a true Star Wars experience. They're angry at the loss of a familiar gameplay style they were comfortable with, and the Star Wars-ness of the game matters far less to them.
I have a couple of established characters in SWG and (as of this writing on 11/17/05) there are bugs in the new game which make the conversion of existing characters less than perfect (i.e. they don't currently get the level-related weapon and item rewards they're supposed to getting). This IS SOE, after all, and they're somewhat notorious for rushing things to live servers without sufficient beta testing.
BUT SOE is already aware of the conversion problem and is working on a hotfix patch as I write this. Unlike many, I don't expect perfection-on-release from any online game, nor do I believe that 15 bucks a month buys me my own personal dev team.
All this said, any NEW characters you create seem to work very well. The new tutorial zone is excellent, and again, it all (finally) feels more like Star Wars when you play planetside (space play always had that Star Wars feel).
Faster action, linked quests, a more streamlined interface -- there's much to recommend here if you actually want to play a *Star Wars* game.
Some purists complain about the inclusion of Force-sensitive (pre-Jedi/Dark Jedi) characters as a basic class in a game which is supposed to be set somewhere between the end of the original Star Wars and the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. The truth is, there have *always* been "too many" Jedi in the game, ever since the path to Jedi-hood was first discovered and posted all over the internet.
SOE tried to make Jedi a rare profession in a couple of ways, but it didn't work. Players who want their lightsaber will grind to get it, no matter what.
So now, SOE has mainstreamed Force sensitives and doesn't "hide" from the issue. It will still be many, many levels before a Force-sensitive sees his or her first lightsaber -- but now the character class is balanced to be a part of the game as a whole, rather than some rare uber-1337 profession.
I'm sure that those who hate the changes have already paid assassins to kill me for daring to challenge their views, but I'm telling you my honest, personal opinion: this is not the old SWG, but if you want a game that's closer to Star Wars than SWG has ever been, you might want to pick up a timecard and the SWG Starter Kit and give it a try. It's not Knights of the Old Republic, nor Battlefront II, but Star Wars Galaxies is now more truly Star Wars than it's ever been before.